Archive for Washington Nationals

Tyler Clippard was the winning pitcher in last year’s All-Star game. That might come as a surprise to casual fans, because the Washington Nationals set-up-man-turned-closer isn’t exactly a household name. He is, however, one of the best relievers in the National League.

Originally a starter in the Yankees system, the 27-year-old Clippard has been quietly lethal since moving into the Nationals bullpen. Since the beginning of the 2009 season, he has allowed 168 hits in 268 innings, and his K/9 over that span has been 10.65.

Clippard talked about the secrets to his success — including his mesmerizing changeup — when the Nationals visited Fenway Park last weekend.

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Clippard on closer mentality and high-leverage usage: “I feel like anybody can do it. There is definitely a mentality there, but I think that a lot of it plays into just being a big-league pitcher. If you’re pitching in important roles out of the bullpen, whether it’s the seventh, eighth or ninth, a lot of it is similar.

“I’m a believer in [having your best reliever pitch in high-leverage situations] but it’s also a tough thing to really pinpoint. The game is always changing and you don’t know what’s going to happen in the next inning. It’s a lot of in-the-moment stuff. Your six, seven and eight hitters could put together better at bats than the two, three, four guys. You never know for sure how to go about it, so maybe it’s better to put guys in roles and let them feel comfortable. That might be the best way to approach it.”

On having been a starter: “In 2009, I was still developing physically, mentally, the whole thing. The starter role kind of got taken away from me that year. It was the year I finally started throwing a little bit harder and developed a cutter. I was still learning

“I feel that I could go back to starting. Read the rest of this entry »

Jordan Zimmermann and Gio Gonzalez have a few notable things in common. The Washington Nationals mound duo have outstanding stuff and rely more on pitching to their strengths than on scouting reports. Each boasts an ERA under 3.00 and is one of the best pitchers in the National League.

They also have their differences. Zimmermann is a reserved right-hander with a four-pitch mix and a relatively low strikeout rate [6.52]. Gonzalez is a fun-loving southpaw with a three-pitch mix and a high strikeout rate [11.02]. The 26-year-old Zimmermann returned to the Nationals rotation after undergoing Tommy John surgery, the 27-year-old Gonzalez arrived via an off-season trade.

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Zimmermannn on his approach: “I look at scouting reports a little bit, but I don’t like to look at them too much. I watch some video, but I don’t get too caught up in what’s in the reports.

“I’m always out there seeing how the hitter’s swing is and making adjustments during the game. I’m seeing things like where his front foot is landing. If he’s late on the fastball, I’m going to throw it again. If he’s on something, I’m probably going to mix it up and throw something else.

“What I throw has a lot to do with how I feel that day — what I feel is going to be working. On any given day, it could be a different pitch that‘s my best pitch. I’m obviously going to come after guys with my fastball, but it could be my curveball or my slider that’s my better pitch that day.”

On his curveball and his slider: “I throw a pretty hard slider. It’s 86 to 88 or 89 [mph]. It’s kind of like a small baby cutter. Read the rest of this entry »

The Washington Nationals are first in scouting, first in player development and first in the National League East. Mike Rizzo deserves much of the credit. The former scouting director became the Nats’ assistant GM in 2006 and he has been the general manager since 2010. Highly respected as a talent evaluator, Rizzo has helped build one of the most exciting young teams in baseball.

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Rizzo on the impact of the new CBA on the draft: “The strategy and the philosophy are very important. You have to have a clear thought process as to what your end goal is before the draft has started. It takes some creativity and some foresight to really put your master plan in place. The [changes] impacted us. They impacted the strategy we employed in putting together our draft board, and in putting together our top-10-round picks.”

On scouting and player development: “To me, it’s a two-headed monster. It’s never just player development, and it’s never just scouting. The two go hand in hand. It’s a hand-in-glove type of thing, and I think the state of our scouting and player development systems has never been stronger here in Washington.

“Our philosophy is that we take the best player available, at all times. We also take [the type of] players that we’ve had success developing in the past. Read the rest of this entry »

With the loss of yet another baseball player to a torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) comes a fresh opportunity for a young, inexperienced prospect. The Washington Nationals organization has replaced starting catcher Wilson Ramos with part-timer Jesus Flores and called up rookie Sandy Leon to serve as the new backup.

Leon is known as a glove-first catcher but his bat began to show signs of improvement at high-A ball in 2011 and that continued over into 2012 with his assignment to double-A. At the time of his promotion Leon was hitting .319/.356/.457 in 27 games. Despite his improvements with the stick he’s not as good as those numbers suggest, though, and the 130 wRC+ is the result of a small sample size. He posted a wRC+ of 89 in 2011. Leon is a switch-hitter and he offers more potential while swinging from the left side.

There is not much that Leon, 23, doesn’t do on defense. He is a great receiver, he calls a solid game and he isn’t afraid to get down and block pitches. The young catcher has an average arm in terms of strength but it’s accurate and he does a nice job of controlling the running game. With one of the strongest pitching staffs in baseball, Leon is exactly what the club needs in a backup catcher and he’s an excellent complement to Flores.

Leon signed with Washington out of Venezuala in 2007. He was actually scouted by two very savvy baseball minds in now-GM Mike Rizzo and Dana Brown, who is currently Special Assistant to the GM in Toronto. Although he will likely never be an impact player with the bat, Leon has a chance to be a valuable bench player for the Washington Nationals.

Sandy Leon isn’t the only intriguing catching prospect in the Nationals system, even after the off-season trade of Derek Norris, which helped the club acquire left-handed starter Gio Gonzalez. David Freitas, currently playing in high-A ball, is more of an offensive-minded catcher than Leon but he can hold his own on defense and should eventually become an average big league backstop. On offense he shows a good eye, can hit for a decent average and has good gap power. Freitas, 23, is currently hitting .300/.390/.478 in 25 games. He was originally a 15th round draft pick out of the University of Hawaii in 2010.

So here’s what we know:
1) Bryce Harper, a phenomenally talented 19 year old who also occasionally does annoying things, got plunked by Cole Hamels on May 6.
2) Cole Hamels admitted doing it on purpose, “to continue the old baseball… that old-school prestigious way of baseball.”

Read the rest of this entry »

On Sunday, Jordan Zimmermann continued his excellent season with six and a third shutout innings at home against the Rockies. He struck out six, walked none, and it was the 17th time in his 18 starts that he walked fewer than two batters. Though he doesn’t have an above-average whiff rate or strikeout rate, his excellent control has proven that he should remain a good major league starter for the forseeable future.

Or, at least for another seven starts or so this year. If Bill Ladson’s reporting is correct, the team will be limiting the 25-year-old right-hander to 160 innings this year. Though the pitcher hasn’t mentioned any health issues, the Nationals would like to be cautious and will make Zimmermann the fifth starter so they can skip the occasional start and limit the innings. After all, he’s still coming off Tommy John surgery and hasn’t ever pitched more than 134 innings combined in one calendar year.

But, as you might have noticed from the titular hint, this is not a post about Jordan Zimmermann and innings limits. Instead, it’s about some comments that Nationals manager Davey Johnson made about the plan to limit the innings.

Read the rest of this entry »

When Jim Riggleman fired himself last week after winning 11 of his last 12 games with the Nationals, it was weird at first and only got weirder the more you thought about it. Jim Riggleman isn’t a great manager. His career record is 662-824. As Tom Boswell has written, he has “the worst record in baseball history of any 12-year manager.” Some analysts suggested that Riggleman didn’t want to resign, he just wanted to bluff Mike Rizzo into picking up his option year. But Jim Riggleman is a mediocre manager of bad baseball teams. He is not a man with a great deal of leverage: he is a beggar who thought he was a chooser. And unless another team boss makes a decision as foolish as Riggleman’s, he will never manage in the major leagues again.

According to GM Mike Rizzo, Riggleman gave an ultimatum: if he wasn’t given an extension before the team left for Chicago, he wasn’t getting on the bus. When Riggleman didn’t get his extension, he explained to reporters that the reason he quit was that his one-year contract was intolerable, and “I’m too old to be disrespected.” Riggleman’s hometown newspaper, the Washington Post, spent the next several days trying to come up with an explanation for why he did what he did. They couldn’t. Dave Sheinin and Adam Kilgore quoted an unnamed acquaintance of Riggleman’s as saying, “I can’t think of a single way in which Jim’s life is going to be better because of this… And I can think of a hundred ways it will be worse.”
Read the rest of this entry »

When Adam Dunn signed with the White Sox earlier this offseason for four years and $56 million dollars, I generally agreed with those like Dave Cameron who saw it as perhaps a slight overpayment, but reasonable given that Dunn will be moving to a park that favors his prodigious power and to a team and league that will finally allow him to spend most of his time at his natural position — designated hitter. I generally still agree with the assessment. However, there are some things worth watching as Dunn begins his in Chicago in relation to his shift in league, position, park, and his recent plate approach. What better to write about on Hall of Fame Announcement Day than a player who signed more than a month ago?

Read the rest of this entry »

At 343-466, the revival of baseball in Washington D.C. has not gone as planned since the relocation of the Montreal Expos in 2005. Two straight 59 win seasons certainly signal a rebuilding era ahead for a team that in 2005 held a playoff spot for 38 games in June and July and was within 4.5 games in August.

Former GM Jim Bowden didn’t put the Nationals in a position to win, as acquisitions such as Lastings Milledge (which was not necessarily a bad deal, but a poor result), Austin Kearns, Emilio Bonifacio, and Wily Mo Pena combined with poor prospect development (outside of Ryan Zimmerman, of course) to result in some very poor teams on the field in the nation’s capital.

The quality of the new leadership in Washington, captained by Mike Rizzo, remains to be seen. One thing is for sure. Come 2011, he will not be able to make the excuse that he was hamstrung by the signings of the previous regime.

The Washington Nationals should be expected to field a payroll of approximately 60 million dollars once again, after actually increasing their payroll 6 million dollars over the 2008 team. This offseason, $14.35 million will come off the books in the form of Dmitri Young, Nick Johnson, Joe Beimel (who was traded to the Rockies at the deadline), Wil Ledezma, Josh Bard, and Julian Tavarez.

Certainly, that is not enough to allow the Nationals to spend their way into contention. In 2010, however, a veritable flurry of contracts will expire. In fact, the only non-arbitration, non-minimum contract dollars the Nationals have committed in 2011 are to Ryan Zimmerman. This time, it’s 22.5 million dollars, via Adam Dunn, Cristian Guzman, Austin Kearns, and Willie Harris.

By 2011, the Nationals will be free of all the moves made in the Jim Bowden era. Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper (we assume) will be in the organization and possibly even in the majors. Jordan Zimmermann showed potential before his injury and Ryan Zimmerman is one of the best players in the majors. Nyjer Morgan is a tremendous fielder, and Ian Desmond is a bright spot as a SS prospect. Now what remains to be seen is if Mike Rizzo can put a competitive team around these core players.

This week’s salary dump by the Florida Marlins will definitely benefit the Washington Nationals. The trade sent established Major League players Josh Willingham, an outfielder, and Scott Olsen, a left-handed pitcher in need of an attitude adjustment, to Washington for three prospects. Yesterday, you read about Dave Cameron’s take on the Major Leaguers in the trade.

The three prospects obtained by Florida include: second baseman Emilio Bonifacio, infielder Jake Smolinski, and right-hander P.J. Dean. I’ll touch on Bonifacio with a little more depth tomorrow over at RotoGraphs, because he has the most potential of the three for regular playing time at the Major League level in 2009. Basically, he’s really fast, doesn’t walk enough and strikes out too much. He hit .243/.296/.337 in 169 MLB at-bats in 2008 at the age of 23.

Smolinski was a 2007 second round pick out of an Illinois high school. He was a shortstop in high school, played outfield in his pro debut and then spent 2008 at second base, where he failed to set the world on fire. The 19-year-old hit .306/.364/.408 with no home runs in 98 short-season at-bats in 2008. He also hit .261/.330/.402 with four home runs in 184 A-ball at-bats. He posted rates of 9.4 BB% and 17.9 K% at the higher level. His ISO increased from .102 in the short-season league to .141 in A-ball. Smolinski is your basic B-level prospect whose value could easily go way up or way down in 2009.

Dean is my favorite player in the deal. He is a young, projectable right-hander who currently throws 90-92 mph with room to grow. Dean also has a curveball with plus potential and a developing change-up. A 2007 seventh round pick out of high school, Dean has spent the past two seasons in short-season ball. In 2008, he posted a 1.57 ERA (but 3.40 FIP) with 26 hits allowed in 46 innings pitched. He also had rates of 3.13 BB/9 and 6.65 K/9. In two seasons totaling 77 innings, Dean has allowed just three home runs.

The trade between Florida and Washington will definitely favor the latter organization for at least the next three seasons. But if either Dean or Smolinski reaches his potential, it could swing back to Florida’s favor (at least until said player gets too expensive).